Dan Hooker coach Eugene Bareman stands by corner’s decision to not throw towel in

City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman is surprised by the amount of criticism that Dan Hooker’s third-round loss to Edson Barboza has received.

During the third round of the lightweight bout, commentator and UFC champion Daniel Cormier urged the fight to be stopped as the Brazilian blasted Hooker to the body and attempted to go upstairs to finish the job. In the wake of the bout, Hooker’s corner and the contest’s referee, Rob Hinds, were called into question by fans and media alike for allowing the fight to continue, leading to broader conversations about whose responsibility it is to stop a fight and the danger of praising fighters’ will to continue to wade into battle.

Bareman was unable to corner “The Hangman” in Milwaukee due to a wedding he attended in Ireland, which had been planned approximately a year in advance. Knowing that he would be unable assist his fighters during that period, the celebrated Kiwi coach explicitly warned his athletes not to take fights on Dec. 15, but when Hooker was given an opportunity to face a top tier opponent, Bareman had no qualms about the surging lightweight taking the fight.

“I would’ve never wanted Dan to even consider not taking that fight because a couple of cornermen couldn’t make it,” stated Bareman, fresh off a lengthy series of flights from Ireland back to Auckland.

Bareman watched the fight in the early hours of Sunday morning in a hotel bar in Mullingar, Westmeath, a little less than 4,000 miles from Milwaukee. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t the most comfortable viewing for the decorated Muay Thai fighter.

“It was very difficult to watch,” he admitted. “I watched the fight with another coach who works very closely with Dan. I don’t drink myself, but my other coach had a few drinks on him and he was almost on the verge of weeping after the fight, which made it even more emotional. It was different for me, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but that’s just based on the fight. I’m sure I’d be telling you a different story if Dan had won spectacularly.”

Bareman recalled how he and Hooker decided to put two men in is corner that he has utmost respect for: City Kickboxing’s wrestling coach, Andrei Paulet, and a national legend who has been coaching Hooker for even longer than Bareman has, Karl Webber.

“I put a group of guys in charge of that corner that I have 100 percent faith in and that I back, and so does Dan. Our wrestling coach was there and the other guy that was there is a bit of a legend in these parts, his name is Karl Webber. He’s one of the pioneers of MMA in New Zealand and he’s also Dan’s original coach. To be honest, there is only one guy in this sport that knows Dan better than I do and it’s him. He’s probably cornered Dan and been with Dan for longer than I have, he’s very experienced.”

Unlike his spectacular student and middleweight social media guru, Israel Adesanya, Bareman is not the most clued in when it comes to discussions on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. He revealed that he wasn’t aware that the decision to allow Hooker to fight on in the third round of his clash with Barboza had been such a source of controversy until Webber reached out to him.

“I wasn’t actually aware of too much criticism until [Webber] messaged me, because I’m not too savvy when it comes to social media, I just don’t keep up with it,” he explained. “[Webber] messaged me saying, ‘Apologies, you’re probably going to get a bit of heat for not throwing the towel in.’ He told me himself: ‘I was there and I know Dan, we know each other very well, and there was no way that he wanted me to throw the towel in at that point.’

“Whether I would’ve thrown the towel in … I’m not even going to get into that, to be honest. I back the decision that those guys made, I put them in the corner and I have 100 percent faith in them.”

The City Kickboxing head coach does believe that Cormier’s commentary in third round, when he willed the fight to end, has made the stoppage or lack there of a far more polarizing issue than it should be.

“I find it so presumptuous that people who wouldn’t know Dan at all, people who don’t know him from a bar of soap, can even comment on something like that. I watched that fight in a bar where I was forced to listen to the commentary, that’s something I don’t normally do. When I watch fights, I watch them on mute because I find myself disagreeing with the commentators. At the end of the day it’s a choice; if I don’t agree with what they’re saying, I can just not listen to them, so that’s why I mute it,” Bareman outlined.

“A lot of people, including fighters, have a very rudimentary understanding of the sport and if [their opinion] annoys me, I don’t have to listen to them. If Daniel Cormier is commentating on an Olympic wrestling match, then I’ll tune in an listen to him all day, but at the end of the day, the guy is still a student, he’s a fighter and he’s only had 20 fights. I know I’ll get criticism for that because he’s a UFC champion, but that’s how I feel. These guys shouldn’t be part of a commentary team when they’re just learning about the sport.”

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

Bareman believes that the watching world took cues from Cormier’s commentary, which resulted in a lot of online outrage. He also thinks that the media’s need to amplify certain stories from a fight night led to a greater fixation on whether the fight should have been stopped earlier or not.

“People like Joe Rogan hold so much influence over the sport and he’s probably not even aware of it, but whatever Joe Rogan says [about MMA] is taken as truth. You’ve got to remember that someone who listens to Joe Rogan is your average Joe that doesn’t know that much about the sport. Every bit of technical information they receive is from Joe and everything he says is taken as fact. I think commentators have the same effect on the watching world when these fights take place. Daniel Cormier and Paul Felder, they have that same effect on people in that situation, whatever they say gets exacerbated and multiplied,” Bareman said.

“Another part of it is, sometimes I think the media needs something to talk about. They need a flag to fly and they can make a big thing out of something that isn’t necessarily a big thing. The media need to tell a story and sometimes things can become bigger stories than they are.”

He also found Cormier’s urging of the referee to stop the contest to be hypocritical given that “DC” has criticized Hooker for having a more reserved fighting style in the past, dating back to his 2017 win over Marc Diakiese.

“Several days after that [Diakiese] fight, I was made aware of a tweet Daniel Cormier put out in the early minutes of that fight, ridiculing the two guys, basically saying ‘this isn’t what we wanted,’ because he thought it was going to be an action-packed fight. To people who know things about the sport, we had a pretty clear gameplan and part of that gameplan was not rushing in and taking our time a little bit. At the end of the day, the gameplan worked, because being patient led to Diakiese taking a sloppy shot and falling into a guillotine.

“Daniel Cormier was highly critical of that plan at the start of that fight. We come to this fight, we give him the action-packed fight that he wanted, but we still can’t satisfy the guy.”

As for the referee and Octagon-side doctor who reviewed Hooker between rounds two and three, Bareman underlined that he had no problem with how the officials performed on the night either.

“Everybody should be taken into account for not throwing in the towel or throwing in the towel, stopping the fight or not stopping the fight. It’s a conglomerate of everyone that’s there. In a way they’re all backing the other person’s decision. If one person doesn’t make the decision, it’s onto the other person to make a decision. There are doctors, cornermen, coaches, referees, so everyone needs to be held accountable. That being said, I didn’t have a problem with the officiating, to be honest,” he said.

Hooker’s feelings on the matter are what matter most to Bareman and “The Hangman” has no ill will as to what took place in the Milwaukee co-main event.

“At the end of the day, I talked to Dan and he was happy about everything that had happened. He told me that he absolutely did not want the towel thrown in. Personally, I’m a big believer in having the towel ready. If you look at my record, you’ll see that I’ve thrown in the towel many times for different fighters, but like I said, I was not there. It wasn’t my call to make that night and I 100 percent back the coaches that I put in, and especially Karl, who probably knows Dan even better than I do.”

Bareman highlighted that there must be a more nuanced conversation about when fights should be stopped, noting that the UFC’s incentivizing of wins has an impact on fighters and corners alike. He also stressed that if he cannot make a certain event to act as a corner for a fighter, his fighters still need to compete to make money.

“If I can’t make it, these guys have to fight and that’s another part of this sport that needs to be addressed. A guy like Dan fights on average about two times a year. We’re talking about a sport that cuts your income in half if you lose. That’s crazy. It’s not 20 percent or 10 percent you lose. You lose half your income straightaway if you lose. That’s a lot of pressure, especially when you only fight two times a year.

“How is that kind of incentive supposed to help keep the fighters safe? Of course, if you’re fighting two times a year and your income is getting halved if you lose, fighters are not going to want to stop and of course corners are under pressure to not throw in the towel. You’re talking about someone’s quality of living. Dan’s just had a kid, he’s got a wife and they have bills to pay. There are so many factors involved that it’s very difficult to just watch a fight and determine what should or should not have happened.”

The contest subsequently brought about a conversation regarding the dangers of praising the toughness and durability of fighters. Bareman called for a change in the narrative and recognizes the dangers of heaping such accolades on combat sport athletes.

“Someone’s ability to take punishment should not be put on a pedestal because that encourages fans to celebrate people taking punishment and the sport rewarding that kind of thing can only lead to fights getting stopped much later than they possibly should. I believe that is the danger of putting those kinds of qualities on a pedestal,” he stated.

“Sometimes, in some fights, it goes into the trenches. There are degrees of toughness; not all fighters are as tough as each other. What should be praised about Dan is, not that he’s tough or he can take a lot of punishment, it’s something inside of him that should be celebrated. It’s bravery, it’s courage — he gets himself into tough spots and he never stops trying — it’s bravery, it’s not toughness or durability. Let’s not talk about how many shots the guy can take. Let’s talk about his fierce courage and bravery, that kind of thing should be put on a pedestal.”

He traced Hooker’s downfall in the fight to a shot that he took in the opening round of the clash.

“We thought we had a good gameplan and it got stifled right from the start and we just couldn’t get off. If you want to talk about what went wrong in that fight, it was right at the start of that fight when he took a right hand and stumbled out to his left. That was a hard right hand that visibly rocked him, and after that he was never the same for the remainder of the contest. That’s just my opinion.”

Bareman and Hooker have decided that it is best to take some time off with a view to returning to action at the midpoint of 2019.

“I saw him yesterday and he looks fantastic. He wasn’t even limping or anything. We’ve had a little chat and he’s going to take quite a bit of time off; off the cuff, you might not see him until the midway point of next year. In the past, I’ve rested guys for nine months to a year after a concussion and that’s after a recommended suspension of just four weeks. Sometimes you’ve got to be cunning about it too because fighters really don’t want to do that; they don’t want to even hear someone suggest that they rest for nine months, so sometimes I’ll say I haven’t been able to find them an opponent or something like that.

“Israel [Adesanya] is a perfect example of that. When he got stopped by [Alex] Pereira, the first thing he wanted to do was jump back in. [Adesanya] was a guy that I had to tell a small white lie to every now and then because he would’ve been pissed at me like there was no tomorrow. I just knew he needed more rest after suffering a knockout.

“I’m confident Dan will come back from this,” he added.